The two have founded Brimzz Hats, a company whose signature product is an interchangeable hat brim.

The company has dozens of crown-brim combinations for its ball cap-style hats.

"It just snaps into place. It lines up perfectly every time," Hanning said. "You just swap out the brim to match the shoes or the shirt or the look you are going for that day.

"Everybody says it's such a cool idea they wish they had thought of it."

The brims are attached to the crowns using a series of small but powerful magnets. The brims fit tight and can be replaced easily, Schmeling said.

"We talked about some ways to have the brim disconnect and then reconnect seamlessly without much effort," Hanning said. "We settled on the idea of using high-powered magnets."

The hats use neodymium magnets, which are extremely strong. Neodymium magnets can hold more than 1,000 times their own weight and are much stronger than refrigerator magnets that many people are accustomed to, according to wisegeek.org.

"They are super-small and they are super-strong," Hanning said.

The idea for the hats was conceived about a year ago.

"We were at a family get-together and Josh came up with the idea," Hanning said. "The next day we were building prototypes, and within a week we were at the patent attorney's office."

They kept their day jobs as independent contractors, Hanning in software and Schmeling in construction. Their free time was spent wrecking and rebuilding hats.

"We spent many weekends and evenings at the sewing machine," Hanning said. "We got hats, and we ripped them apart and built our own little prototypes.

"Shortly after that we were looking for manufacturers to work with us on developing it."

In the process, Hanning and Schmeling discovered a trend among an age group ranging from about 15 to 24 where they add their own style touches to hats.

"The more we looked at it on YouTube, we discovered there is a whole culture and community of kids out there that are customizing their own hats," Hanning said.

The trend goes something like this: Teenagers and twentysomethings go to thrift stores and pick up old hats they want to modify. They take the hats apart and glue on new fabric. Then they put them back together again.

"There's a ton of videos where people share their techniques about how they do it," Hanning said. "It was news to me that people were doing this.

"Josh's idea for the hat kind of played right into that market."

The company has had its first batch made and has begun selling them online.

Developing the product has been the fun part. Now, they have to sell it.

"Marketing is tough," Schmeling said. "We're both kind of entrepreneurial, but a major product release is not something that either one of us has ever done."

The fledgling company has no outside investors.

"We did it all out of pocket," Hanning said. "We did it on a shoestring budget."

Regardless of how successful the business may become, Hanning and Schmeling said they have a feeling of satisfaction from having started the company.

"We've had people come and tell us, 'We had that same idea. We wish we would have done it,'" Hanning said.

"We actually went and did it."

About Joe Taschler

Joe Taschler covers aviation, the grocery industry and food production. He is also an assistant business editor, and has won state and national awards for business reporting and editing.